Thanks to my blog being a little poorly over the summer months and me being a bit distracted while searching for my first house (and my very first kitchen) I’ve got a fair few reviews and recipes to catch up with posting. This one took priority because even though summer seems a long time ago now, just looking at the photos of these pizza creations seems to bring all the flavours and smells back (leaving me pretty hungry, actually).

Before the blog went kaboom! I was sent something to review that I’d been hankering over for a while – my very own pizza stone. The nice people over at John Lewis seemed to anticipate my longing for this gadget and offered to send my one to review in order to host a summer barbecue party. Being without my own home at this point I had to make do with catering for one of my parent’s summer shindings but they were pretty pleased with the results. Unfortunately, the Weber pizza stone they sent me from their summer barbecuing collection seems to be out of stock at the moment, though they do have an individual pizza oven, which may actually be a better bet with the current climate!

I found the Weber pizza stone really easy to use and the pizzas I lovingly crafted from scratch were declared the best several of the guests in attendance had ever tasted. As there were some serious carb and cheese lovers present this was pretty high praise indeed. The real plus point of using the pizza stone on the barbecue was the crisp and light base that was achieved without any cheese burning. I played around with a few different pizza stone recipes and toppings but the chorizo barbecue and blue cheese varieties pictured here were my favourites.

Barbecue flavour pizza cooked on the barbecue

Allotment pizza

Pizza stone pizza method

The dough recipe for these pizzas and a lot of inspiration for my toppings from this post over on Andy over from Chilli Up North’s blog. After making the dough and rolling it into two separate pizzas, lightly coated with polenta on the bottom, I decided to make one meaty and one vegetarian version, the toppings of which are listed below. I’ve not listed exact quantities as I think a lot of this is up to personal preference and I’d recommend testing your barbecue sauce as you make it to see how hot/tangy you’d like it

Homemade pizza ingredients

Chorizo barbecue pizza

Picante chorizo (I brought mine back from Barcelona but it’s easy to source)

The toppings for this pizza were a mish-mash of what was ready in the allotment at the time, which happened to be – yellow courgettes, spinach and tomatoes. It made for a very colourful and tasty pizza, which felt almost healthy. The topping was as follows:

Tomato sauce made from passata, homegrown garlic and tomatoes

Roquefort

Pine nuts

Roasted yellow courgettes and yello peppers

Wilted spinach

We were treated to some lovely weather the day of this particular barbecue, which made it fairly hard to photograph the results but they were something pretty special. Yes, it was a little work prepping the dough but the range of flavours in comparison to a shop bought pizza was phenomenal, and it was a great use of all the allotment veg that we’d eaten hundreds of ways up to this point and were running out of ideas for.

I’m more than a little happy to report that my new home has it’s own yard, which should make a brilliant barbecue spot, which means the pizza stone should be getting many more outings next year. All pizza stone recipe ideas are gratefully received via comments below!